June 24, 2017

When I first opened Snap Map, I saw the Bitmoji for one of my friends
in a residential area. I presumed this was her home, and was able to
zoom in close enough to estimate where she lived on that particular
block. Then I called her. “This is a weird question,” I said, “but do
you live at the intersection of X and Y? More particularly, one of
these addresses?” I rattled off three house numbers on the street
closest to where her Bitmoji appeared on Snap Map. One of them was
correct. I’ve never been to her house.

Turned out, she didn’t know she had Snap Map enabled, and didn’t know it was showing her location every time she opened the app.

Companies should be more upfront about what features like this are actually doing. At best, it’s an oversight, and at worst its intentional misdirection.

Either way, considering that the primary audience of this app is teenagers, this should never have shipped this way.